天气预报有大风雨，你还会让孩子参加万圣节活动吗？
上月Halloween晚上，加拿大魁北克省天气预测有大风雨，三十多个城镇包括Montreal把庆祝活动取销或延后，但省府Quebec City和三五个城镇就不参与，孩子的trick-or-treating继续，实行名副其实的风雨无改。
天气预测是这样：”The weather agency warns that people should be on the lookout for flash floods(突然、短暂的水灾) and water accumulation(积水) on the roads.”最后的天气不如预测般差，只下了小雨，其实无必要扫孩子的兴，但若你是家长，这样的weather forecast，会让孩子出去吗？
多玩少玩一晚，没有什么大不了，但有学者就认为这当中反映的问题可大。McGill University 的anthropologist(人类学家) Samuel Veissière提出这个问题：”Do your kids suffer from ‘Halloween Fragility Syndrome’?”
Halloween Fragility Syndrome是他自己原创的“症候”。Fragile是形容词，解easily broken or damaged，易破易坏的；easily destroyed or threatened，易被摧毁或受威胁的，用来形容人，解not strong or sturdy、delicate and vulnerable，虚弱的、脆弱的。Fragility是名词，解脆弱。
Samuel Veissière说：”While my home city of Montreal did not exactly police costume etiquette(礼节、礼仪、规矩), the official decision to cancel festivities because of unpleasant weather was consistent(一致的) with a broader culture of over-protection(过分保护) and aversion(厌恶) to the ‘uncomfortable’ – a growing trend in parenting, teaching, policy-making, and clinical guidelines…”
制造脆弱一代
这说的是过分着重安全，心理学家、The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting Up a Generation for Failure作者Jonathan Haidt称之为”safetyism”(安全主义)。愈来愈多科学家相信，这种态度正造成“灾难性”的社会问题 。
Matthew Lash在”Is safetyism destroying a generation?”一文中，也讨论到”safetyism”与家长态度的关系和祸害：In sum, a well-intentioned(本意良好的) safety culture which has led to “paranoid parenting,” and screen time replacing unstructured and unsupervised play time, has created a fragile generation.
Paranoid解多疑的，paranoid的家长是惊弓之鸟，处处看到危险，过分保护孩子，不让他们离开视线范围。这样一来，就制造了脆弱的下一代。具体问题是：
This cohort(一群) is experiencing a dramatic rise in anxiety, depression and suicide. When they arrived on campus, in an increasingly polarized(两极化的) political climate, they were unprepared to be intellectually challenged. They – or at least the “social justice” activists of this generation – responded by creating a culture of censorship(审查), intimidation(恐吓) and violence(暴力), and witch hunts against non-believers. Universities, led by risk adverse bureaucracies, are treating students like customers and allowing an aggressive(好斗的), censorious minority set the agenda.
这情况在WEIRD国家尤为显著。WEIRD是Western,Educated, Industrial, Rich, and Democratic(西方、教育水平高、工业化、富裕和民主)的缩写。Weird解very strange、bizarre，怪异的、古怪的，这缩写自然有贬义。环境愈好、人民的精神问题就愈大，这确有点weird。’
在Halloween翌日CNN有这条新闻：”7-year-old girl shot in Chicago while trick-or-treating”。Safetyism与否，相信这代的家长仍会说︰”Better safe than sorry!”(安全好过后悔！)”You can’t be too careful!”(小心不会嫌多！)
